John Harbaugh's Combine Press Conference

in the Ravens Press Pass feed. So with that, here's what John Harbaugh had to say at the twenty twenty three NFL Scouting Combine. All right, good to see everybody appreciate you being here. Been a great combine. What question do you have, Yeah, it's yeah. We've been texting back and forth here and there over the last ever since the season was over. So I feel like Lamar's doing really well. It's it's uh, it's just what it is.

Part of the business, you know. It's what you expect when you have a great quarterback, when you make a great decision in the draft, you know, and I think we I think Lamar has done a great job in terms of developing as a quarterback and winning football games and competing and doing all the things that he does. I feel like we've done a great job in terms of bringing out the best in Lamar over the years and UH, and it's just evident the way he plays,

you know. And so he's my quarterback, he's my guy. I love him, and UH as a coach, I just I'm looking forward to seeing it get done. But it's not easy, you know, It's never easy. It's the business part of it. So um, but I'm really hopeful and excited, fervently hopeful, and I can't wait for it to get done. Not very much, you knows, as little as possible, for sure. I mean, our plans are for Lamar. One of the things we did and I think some of it was

written about. But when we we had all these UH went through a process with the the offensive coordinator position. We we interviewed fourteen candidates. We had twenty one different different interviews. They were extensive interviews on zoom and in person, and of course that comes up, you know, because we're talking about how we're going to build an offense, and all those interviews were based on Lamar being in the quarterback. Lamar's the quarterback. How we're going to build the offense.

So that's the direction that we're planning for per se where Yeah, well, I mean that's not black and white, you know what I mean? What what is? What is that mean exactly? I've heard different words about it. Lamar and I had great conversation after the season about every aspect of our offense. Lamar is, I mean, he's he's he's Uh, it matters to him. You know. He wants to be involved in the wide receivers, he wants to be involved in the offensive line, he wants to be

involved in the scheme. Uh. He wants to put the best he wants to be a part of the best offense in football. There's no doubt about it. So we talked extensively the week after the season that Wednesday or Thursday or whenever it was, and after that it was all by text back and forth. It's a fast moving process. As you know, there's no way anyone person besides the coach me doing the interviews. I'm the only one that can be fully involved in every interview and do all

the interviews. You're not gonna have anybody involved with everything and certainly not a player who's you know, preparing to play football. But you do the best you can with that. I did the best I could with that. I think we all did. People like Anthony Weaver, who led the committee, was amazing, and the whole process and everybody involved in the organization, the candidates that were involved. I learned a

lot and I'm really confident in the outcome. I think it's been said, it's been written, wisdom is in the results, and I'm pretty fired up about the results of that search. Yeah, you know, that's not something I'm gonna get too involved in terms of what we do or how we do it. But I will say this about Lamar Jackson. There's no bigger better competitor in football than Lamar Jackson. Lamar is a competitor, you know, and he's gonna want to he's gonna want to be a part of the best offense

in football. And uh that's what I That's what I know about him. And I'm just looking forward to getting to work. Like, yeah, why he was injured, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, everybody brings something to the table, and so many of these guys, I mean, what I found out Cliff is there's so many great coaches in football right now, and that's kind of like get you fired up. As I'm a I'm a I'm a career professional football coach, and so that got me fired up. But Todd was

unique for us. I think nigue for Lamar, and he's unique for our offense and where we're going to go and kind of our style. He's not he wasn't kind of locked into a system quite as much. He's been in every kind of system. He's coached at every level. He's run the ball, he's thrown the ball, he's protected different ways. He's played with four, four and five wide receivers, he's had running backs, he's played with tight ends. He's kind of done everything. You know. He's played fast, he's

played out of the huddle. All those things I thought were things that we're gonna want to do going forward. So you know, I'm excited about him. I just uh, we've already started building the offense, you know, and uh, you know, I can't wait to get back to work after we get back from the combine. On that oh way back when first impression of Lamar Jackson when we

drafted him, Um humble determined competitor. The first thing he said was, you know, I'm bringing a super Bowl to Baltimore, and and and I'm a believer, man, I believe that's gonna happen. Kind of getting back to your question, Uh, that's you know, things things, Things are tough, man. It's a tough league. You know, it's tough to win every game. I'm just talking to the guys. My good friends in Philly.

My good friends in Kansas City won the super Bowl, right my good friends in Philly lost the Super Bowl. Are my good friends in Philly. You'd think they didn't win a game this year, right now. That's how they feel. That's how it kind of works, and that's how we felt. That's how we felt after our Cincinnati game, you know. And but everybody does their best, nobody does more than Lamar. I mean, I promise you it's your other question back there.

I don't mean to skip over it. But if he could have played, just like all of our players, he would have played. There's no question in my mind about that. And he would have played as soon as he was ready to play, you know, hopefully would have been next week, the next week, I don't know, but uh, never doubt that about Lamar Jackson. I mean, he's gonna be out there, he's gonna be competing, he's gonna be given everything he's got in every situation. Just now, I don't think so.

I think his focus was on getting himself back on the field. You know, you can talk all about that stuff, but he was thinking singularly about one thing, rehabbing, keeping the swelling out of his knee as much as he could. That's all he was thinking about. That's all he talked about. Oh yeah, Tyler's a greatly The guys love him. You know, he's a competitor. They believe in him. I love Tyler, um uh uh. He's he's a young, developing quarterback. He's

he's another competitor. He's one of our guys. So I got a great future right. Well yeah, Well here's the thing. Fortunately, I don't have to do that because I don't have to do negotiating. So I'm on Eric's and Lamar side to get a deal done, you know what I mean. And so the thing I do know is that both those guys are are good people who want to get the deal done. And then the rest of it's just business,

you know. So I'm sure they'll figure it out. But uh yeah, I'm sure that's challenging for the two guys involved. But I'm out of that. I'm I'm I'm I'm for the Ravens, and I'm for Lamar and Eric and us together, we're a team. Yeah. Well, you know, that's a great question, and I think that's still to be determined in terms of how we'll value wide receivers. I know Todd will have a big part of that in terms of, you know, what he wants to do offensively. I'm excited about Rashad Bateman.

I mean, let's not forget we we drafted Rashad three years ago, and uh, you know, Rashad's had a couple of nicks the last couple of years. But I'm telling you, he's supremely talented, supremely determined the football player, and he's he's chomping at the bit to get back here and go been. I've been texting him, you know, guys like the text been texting him. I did talk to Isaiah likely on the phone. We actually talked on the phone.

That was a breakthrough, and you know, player coach relationships in the twenty twenties, but Uh, now he's a he's raider role cornerbacks. Yeah, it's funny you say that. Yeah, that I've been I've been watching those guys on tape in between uh, in between interview sessions, so I've probably seen it. In my opinion, ten quarterback cornerbacks that could go in the first two rounds. It's loaded, and they're all they could. You know, they're all great players, they're

all potential starters, first year starters. It's a great crew. Some of the nuances that make any opensive coordinator transition difficult, they're challenging. How do you think is kind of approaching the Well, the good thing about Todd with that challenge is is, uh, he's been there before in a couple of different situations, so he's experienced with that. He's not a first time coordinator. He's not a first time new coordinator changing jobs. He's done it in the NFL, he's

done in college. He's done it both ways. So I'm not too worried about it. I think when you talk to him, you get a feel he's he's pretty secure and what he what, you know, how he looks at things, So he'll be fine, you know, you know, It's a good question. How quickly did it take the determined a guy. You gotta be careful not to do it too quickly

because you can definitely make up your mind. Then you get like a little bias, you know, to your first opinion, and you don't want to do that because sometimes the more tape you watch it can definitely sway what you think. So you usually you know, usually know pretty quickly, but you gotta watch it all. That's a good question. Tampa Bay. Dave was a guy that we didn't know anything about.

Talked to Coach Carroll about David, and uh, Coach Carroll really just gave a great recommendation in terms of who he was. And I would say it was all that Coach Carroll said him more he was. He's a great guy. He's a very likable guy. Uh, you know, a good

family man, you know, a strong faith person. But man, his his command of the offense, not just the offense they ran in Seattle, but the one that the new one, the one that they've run for the last ten years, or than his ability to deal with quarterbacks, I just thought was off the charts. He's gonna do a good job. I'm just saying gritty is not your job. That's part's job.

Thinking complicated one of Deshaun Watson. You think, okay, maybe, yeah, you know, I probably didn't as much, you know, I was. I wasn't thinking so much about those ramifications. I just felt like and put my trust in the fact that you know, we want Lamar and Lamar wants to be a raven and in the end, that's gonna work itself out in my mind, you know, and then you just let providence do its work. You let providence do its

good work, and I trust in that. So whatever Providence ends up determining in the end, I'm gonna be all four, you know, and I think it's gonna be what's best for everybody. But I've always been confident that we're gonna have you know, it's gonna get worked out. And I still believe that. Ye do we fact well for the draft? You know? Um, I think the Scouts do that. You know, the Scouts a factor that him, and they'll talk to us about it. My interest is going to be does

he have a good heart? And and that's you know, obviously that's that's how hard to define. But you know, bottom line, does he you know, does he treat people the right way? Does he respect other people? Is he fundamentally humble? And then but you still want confident, We still want competitors. We still want very tough, persistent, resilient people. And then you know, how what's their football character as well? I mean do they are they tough? Do they like football?

Do they like meetings? Do they want to lift weights? Do they want to practice hard? Are they into it when they drive home a night? Are they thinking about football when they drive it in the morning? Are they thinking about football? Because I am all the time, and you want the people around you to feel the same way. So that's kind of what we look for in players, probably because he's that kind of guy we just talked about. I mean, he thinks football all the time, you know,

and he's our kind of guy, you know. I don't know, we just I talked to it. We talked to one of the one of the receivers yesterday and he, uh, he played football since he was four and it's the only sport he played and he's pretty good at it. So, um, yeah, I used it like multi sport guys though too. So football players come in all shapes and sizes, really, they really do. It's just kind of different than other sports. Much did you watch I watched. We watched a little

bit of it. It was more in the in the context of him expressing kind of how his vision for our offense going forward. So we watched some of their tape doing it. I didn't sit down and break down Georgia tape. Didn't have time. It would have been nice, probably, but it didn't feel like we needed to. I don't know, you know, I feel like, again, you know, he's talking about Providence doing it's good work. I think he's really good about that. You know, talked about make no oath

for the future. You know, I think he's honest about that. That's probably the difference with him and all these other guys who you know, act like they're not you know, they're not open about opportunities that come along, you know. Jim. Jim's open about it. I think his players respect that, his coaches respect that, you know, and and uh, he's just an open book man. He's a fun guy to be around. I saw some of the Michigan guys here.

They just laugh about, you know, how how fun it is to play there, and what a good guy he is, so, you know, I think he's a Michigan for life probably, But then again, you know, maybe God's got to the plan, so we'll see. Can you be too honest? That's a really good question. It's a deep question. It's a whole lot of honesty involved there, right. I think that's that's a good question for the philosophers, you know anything else. Yeah, Willie tagger Man one of the best coaches in football

about no doubt, groundbreaking person sending, groundbreaking coach, changer. He's a He's a game changing type of a person to me, one of the great offensive minds in the game for sure. He's gonna bring so much to our offense. Our players are gonna love him. I know Todd already loves him. Uh, he's a difference maker. T Martin going to quarterback coach is another guy really excited about, just not from the standpoint just of change, but the standpoint that I think

he's been preparing for this for his whole life. He's a quarterback guy. He played the position, studies the position, and I can tell you this, when we interviewed him for it, he blew us out of the water with it. So we're still looking for a receiver coach. We're still looking for a safety's coach, could even be guys on the staff presently. We're just looking at all options. We're taking our time, so that's where we're at our staff right now. You know what's interesting is very few guys

have too many issues. You know. I can remember starting off twenty five years ago, and half the guys had really pretty kind of legitimate issues. Like nowadays, they'd be like they'd they'd blow up issues. Everybody be talking about them. You know, college, it's tough to get through college nowadays. There's a lot of scrutiny, social media, cameras, phones everywhere. Now these guys are on it, man. I mean, they are prepared more than ever before. So it really doesn't

come up very often. But I think when it does come up, you just got to decide where you draw the line. Organization draws the line at certain things that we don't cross over. That's because Steve Bishotti makes that decision. But after that we just try to judge who they are. As people say that again, I would advise the player to be one hundred percent honest. That's what I would say.

What is the best relationship quarterbacks. Yea. I well, I mean that's a good question because relationships are always based on you know, everybody's different, right, I go back to honesty is a big part of it, you know, if as long as you can be honest with one another, even when it's a tough conversation. We talk a lot with our players about confrontation, and our idea of confrontation

comes from my dad. Confrontation is it gets a bad rap, you know, in terms of definition, you know, confronting things is a good thing. We want to confront everything, but we don't want to confront anybody. We're not about confronting one another. We're about confronting all the issues that are

between us and being the best we can be. So when you got two people, a head coach and a quarterback that want to both be the best that they can be and want their team to be the best that they can be, then you're you're willing to confront everything related to football and being the best we can be. And that's the blayship of Lamar and I have. I mean, if Lamar's upset about something and he thinks something can

be better, oh, he tells me. And if I've got an issue with something, you know, I ask him, But we have a conversation about those things, you know, and I feel like I feel like that honest part of it just just saying, hey, what are we here for. We're here for football. We're here to be the best football team we can be. We're here to be the best football team in the NFL and prove it. That's what we're trying to do every single day. So doing that,

we can confront everything related to that. And to me, that's what the relationship be about the quarterback, but also with all your players. All right, thanks, all right, appreciate you guys. Similar to Eric da Costa coach, Harbaugh remains very optimistic that a deal will get done with Lamar Jackson. He said he met with Lamar after the season and

they talked about every aspect of the offense. John took a lot of questions about the Ravens QB, but he couldn't be more clear he wants Lamar Jackson in Baltimore long term. Harbaugh also seems very excited about new offensive coordinator Todd Munkin. He said Munkin has worked with a ton of different offenses and all the things he has done are what the Ravens want to do moving forward. He also had great things to say about t Martin, the Ravens new quarterbacks coach, as well as newest edition

Willie Taggart, who Harbaugh called a game changer. Thanks for listening to Ravens Press Pass. Just a reminder, Dakasta's press conference is also available now in the Ravens Press Pass feed, and we'll be dropping the NFL Combine Takeaways episode of The Ravens Lounge soon as well. If you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll be back with you soon